The bite-size guide to landing your biggest sale in 2012, Part 1

My daughter landed her biggest sale ever, over $680 in cookie dough sold in a single season of fund-raising sales. She's 9 and she has set her sights on even greater successes for her future. That's what happens when you land your record-breaking sale: It creates for you a different reality, a broader perspective and a new vantage point for your possible future.

If I ask you as a business owner or sales professional, "Tell me about the biggest sale you have ever made," you probably could name the sale, size and circumstances down to the smallest details in less than one minute. That's because our biggest sales create permanent watermarks in us. Yet with all of that identifiable power, we often leave the act of landing our biggest sales up to chance and hope, rather than creating a plan and intentionally winning our next biggest accomplishment.

This 5 part series of blogs gives you a roadmap to use for 2012 in landing your record-breaking sale. These simple ideas have been used by thousands of people and companies to intentionally hunt and land record-breaking sales. This is not about lots of little sales added up to break a record, but rather a single sale that becomes the new trophy-bearing standard.

Why do it? The reasons that you hunt your record-breaking sale are all change related. Landing your record-breaking sale changes:

1. Your perception of what is possible -- Once you have landed your biggest sale, you have reset your expectations. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, "Ones mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."

2. Your credible experience pool -- Big sales change how you are perceived as a person and company in your marketplace. You have a different credibility. This leads to greater opportunities in the future with other companies.

3. Yours and your organization's capacity and capability -- Big sales often change you. A new client may require new systems, processes or plant capacity. You often learn new approaches, quality standards and technologies. This exchange re-shapes your business and sets you on the path to even greater sized clients.

4. Your growth trajectory -- When you chart the history of your territory, your market and your company, there are milestone moments of growth. Often these are anchored around a single account. When you land these iconic clients, you change the growth path and angle. This change in trajectory is what takes businesses beyond the comfortable convention of an industry and turns them into ground-breaking brands.

Here's the first step in this process: Decide that in 2012 you are going to land your biggest, record-breaking sale ever. Make the declaration. Now, work through the next four blogs as a road map for planning your efforts. Stay tuned tomorrow for part two: How to pick your target.